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"But stay. My life here is a lonely one. You're a sister of mercy, aren't you? Have mercy on a lonely old man, and walk with me."
She wanted to say no, to leave at once. At that moment, however, he leaned back in his chair and began to breathe deeply, regularly, with his eyes closed, as he hummed a little tune to himself.
A ritual of calming. So ... at the very moment of inviting her to walk with him, he had felt some kind of anxiety that triggered the device. That meant there was something important about his invitation.
"Of course I'll walk with you," she said. "Though technically my order is relatively unconcerned with mercy to individuals. We are far more pretentious than that. Our business is trying to save the world."
He chuckled. "One person at a time would be too slow, is that it?"
"We make our lives of service to the larger causes of humanity. The Savior already died for sin. We work on trying to clean up the consequences of sin on other people."
"An interesting religious quest," said Anton. "I wonder whether my old line of research would have been considered a service to humanity, or just another mess that someone like you would have to clean up."
"I wonder that myself," said Sister Carlotta.
"We will never know." They strolled out of the garden into the alley behind the house, and then to a street, and across it, and onto a path that led through an untended park.
"The trees here are very old," Sister Carlotta observed.
"How old are *you*, Carlotta?"
"Objectively or subjectively?"
"Stick to the Gregorian calendar, please, as most recently revised."
"That switch away from the Julian system still sticks in the Russian craw, does it?"
"It forced us for more than seven decades to commemorate an October Revolution that actually occurred in November."
"You are much too young to remember when there were Communists in Russia."